The general in charge of a green revamp of Britain’s Armed Forces has nicknamed his dog after Greta Thunberg.
Lt Gen Richard Nugee, head of the military’s Climate Change and Sustainability Review, has tweeted out that his spaniel, Hebe, “has a new nickname – G(reta) T(hunberg).” Presumably, he has vouchsafed this information in the belief that the general public will be totally on board with the idea that the British military is now prioritising pleasing John Kerry over incidental stuff like defending the nation from its enemies.
Perhaps he is right. Maybe your average Briton is just gagging to have his or her tax money spent on novelties like electric-powered military vehicles, “using algae, alcohol and household waste to power aircraft” and “carbon targets across Defence organisations.”
And if the average Briton isn’t gagging to have their money lavished on such projects, Lt Gen Nugee jolly well thinks they ought to be.
He declares breezily in his introduction to the Ministry of Defence report ‘Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach’:
The character of warfare is changing fast; so is the climate. Both issues are changing the way our military fight, live and train in unfamiliar ways. Linking these issues together, they both demand that we adapt to the new circumstances that we face and take transformative action now. We need to change mindsets, and the way we operate in peace, in war and in persistent competition. Now firmly a Defence problem, climate change is a significant challenge. Without adequate assessment of its effects, we leave ourselves exposed. We cannot let our capabilities become less effective against vulnerabilities we cannot see clearly. We have to afford to keep up with the pace of change.
It is highly debatable whether a single word of this is accurate.
It is even more debatable whether this is a responsible use of public money. Though the report does not, of course, say how much is going to be squandered on this green virtue-signalling, there are several worrying clues that it won’t come cheap. For example, in its first year it plans to “Establish an adequately resourced head office team whose activities are governed at the highest levels of Defence and who oversee delivery of this strategic approach and a future implementation plan.”
It seems unlikely that, once in place, this “adequately resourced” team won’t find lots of interesting and expensive ways of burdening the military with ever-more green outlay and more green time-wasting.
And it’s not as though, thanks to successive cuts, mainly under Conservative governments, the military is awash with spare cash for green frivolities. Only two weeks ago, the Armed Forces launched an Integrated Review which would cut Britain’s tactical capabilities to the bone. The Army is to be worst-hit, losing 10,000 personnel, four infantry battalions, 77 tanks, and 760 Warrior fighting vehicles.
Having commanded an artillery regiment in Iraq and later served as Chief of Staff, Combined Force Command in Afghanistan, Lt Gen Nugee cannot be unaware how hard soldiering has become when everything from recruitment to rules of engagement is now so heavily circumscribed by political correctness. Yet here he is cheerleading yet another harebrained, derangedly leftist policy which will undoubtedly weaken Britain’s defence capabilities and make the people he is supposed to protect sleep less safely in their beds at night.
No doubt he is only obeying orders. But he should damn well be ashamed himself.
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